EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos urged non-governmental organizations involved in the care of refugees and migrants to manage funds with more transparency.

“NGOs must manage available funds with transparency,” Avramopoulos said on Wednesday and called on international organizations operating in the country “to step up their efforts to provide immediate assistance to those in need in the islands.”

Avramopoulos was visiting the hot spot of Moria and the refugee camp of Kara on Lesvos together with Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas and EU’s official responsible for NGOs funding, Philippe de Broers.

On his part, Mouzalas said “We covered 70% of the needs in the camps with less money than the money received by NGOs and institutional organizations.”

Mouzalas added that the European Commission needed to take tight control of the funds given to NGOs for refugees and migrants.“We have asked the European Commission and the DG Echo (i.e. DG EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection)” for tighter control “and we have stated that we can not we control to this money” he said.

4 comments

This is another attempt to deflect criticism of the EU and Greek state and put blame onto NGOs who actually delivered the assistance to migrants. It is the European Commission and Greece that have failed miserably. If NGOs are given money without proper accounting procedures, that is the fault of the EU or Greece ministries.

Frankly, Avramopoulos is a known crook, and Mouzalas is just a patsy who does as he is told.

They are all patsies – who cares anymore when we are now “post politics” with only pretend fig leafs of democracy. That’s the nature of the EU. So don’t divert!

However Avramopoulos’ point is sound since EU taxpayers, without being informed of this, are funding the NGOs. And the NGO performance is WAY below par AND way over-priced. Lots of expensive jeeps and 2k to 3k per month salaries for the NGO workers, good housing…while migrants livie in tents and suffer unbelievably slow processing.

NGOs are very lucrative business, and a ton of money is being made from this forced migration.

The refugees were doing better before when it was left to Greek volunteers!

I’m sorry, but you are posting allegations here about NGOs that are not substantiated in any way. I have worked with many of the NGOs and am not aware of these problems. On the contrary, they are far more organised, more responsible than the Greek state and the European Commission, and Greece is very lucky that they are here. Without them, refugees would be dying in their thousands — which is what the East European fascist governments want to happen.
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If you have proper evidence of corruption and poor behaviour of NGOs dealing with migrants, then put up or shut up. And BTW, salaries of 3,000 euros a month are medium salaries in developed EU countries. There is no reason why everyone should have to accept the poverty of Greek wages: much of this has been brought on Greece by its own corrupt politicians and incomepetent management in both public and private sectors.

Actually, a Dutch deputy minister responsible for migration would like to know what the Greek government did with the 115 million Euro Greece got from the EU -on top on another 85 million Euro they got before- in order to improve reception and care for migrants/refugees. He said he would consult his Greek colleagues on that somewhere next week.
Seems it is audit time for both the Greek government and the NGOs. It would also be interesting to see who else is funding the NGOs.